


Her Mother's Sword

by Wolfsong6913



Series: Not the Villain [1]
Category: The Fairyland Series - Catherynne M. Valente
Genre: Gen, Getting her weapon, Meeting her Death, The Worsted Wood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-01
Updated: 2020-12-01
Packaged: 2021-03-09 17:53:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27810310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wolfsong6913/pseuds/Wolfsong6913
Summary: Mallow enters the Worsted Wood searching for the fabled weapon held within. She comes away with much more.
Relationships: Mallow/Map
Series: Not the Villain [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2034805
Kudos: 3





	Her Mother's Sword

**Author's Note:**

> I was in class the other day when I started wondering how pre-queen Mallow got her needle/sword, and what her Death was like, so I wrote this in just a couple hours! I tried to parallel September's method, but keep it unique at the same time, so it may be somewhat out of character compared to the books (because I didn't bother to reread the scene from the book first), but I enjoyed writing it, and I hope people enjoy reading it to.

Mallow stepped slowly on cautious feet across the forest floor. Dried red and yellow leaves crackled like a fire under her feet, an audible match to the glaring red sunset, barely visible through the bare branches of the trees. A cool breeze whipped her hair in her face. She pushed long yellow strands off her eyes and out of her mouth, hunched her shoulders against the chill, and pushed on.

Another dozen steps later, Mallow became aware of a prickling sensation down the back of her neck. She jerked her head from side to side, but saw nothing beyond the crackling leaves, looming trees, and dark shadows. She moved forward again, but the feeling persisted. A giggle drifted in from the lengthening shadows, and she froze.

“Who’s there?” she called, clenching her hands into fists by her sides.

“Nothing much,” came the whispered reply. “At least, not for now.” 

A pair of eyes blinked open in the shadows beside the path, irises gleaming in the shadows striping the bark of an oak. Mallow shivered, and forced her feet to step towards the eyes.

“What will you be later?” she asked, locking her gaze to those ominous eyes and ignoring the shrieking in her limbs and mind to flee. “Will you change into something else?”

The shadow-thing laughed. “I never change. I only grow closer, as time goes on.” The shadows shifted and twisted around the thing, and Mallow could suddenly make out the shrouded outline of a very small girl in the shadows. The shadow-girl skipped across the path, flitting from shadow to shadow. She froze, suspended among the shadows of a willowy birch, and fixed her shadowed gaze on Mallow. “For you, though,” she mused, her dark form flickering as she faded in and out of the shadows. “You and I are going to have an _interesting_ relationship.”

“Do we know each other?” Mallow asked.

The shadow-girl laughed again, and leaned out from the trunk to tap her shadowy finger on Mallow’s nose. “We’ve always known each other, Maud,” she said.

Mallow sucked in a breath and took a hasty step backwards, her eyes wide with shock. “How do you know that name?” she demanded. 

The girl smiled sadly, and her smile was completely still and clear. “I have always been with you,” she said. “I am your Death.”

Mallow felt as still and cold as the girl herself, standing in the middle of this red and dying forest. “Why are you here?” she whispered.

The shadow-girl shrugged flippantly, and the cold moment passed as quickly as it had come. “Why are _you_ here, Maud?”

Mallow flinched. “Don’t call me that.” The words came out sharply, and she immediately regretted her tone. “I’m Mallow now,” she said. “Call me Mallow.”

Her Death tilted her head to the side. “Why are you here, Mallow?”

“I…” Mallow breathed deeply, and tried to will the shaking of her hands to stop. “I’m here to make a place for myself. I can’t stay with Map forever. He’s been wonderful to me, but I need to be able to fend for myself. For that I… I need to know who I am.”

“What’s wrong with staying?” her Death asked. “What ill is there in being a Dry Mage’s apprentice?”

“Nothing!” Mallow defended her friend quickly. “Map’s been very good to me! But I need to know more. More than just Dry Magic. I need to know _everything._ ” She clenched her fists, suddenly aware of the thrumming of the blood in her veins, the pounding of her heart in her ears. “I need to know everything about _you_.”

Her Death smiled, a broad lipping grin that revealed far more teeth than was polite. “What is there to know? I come to take people away when their time is up. The closer I am, the larger I appear, until I am the only thing you see.”

“And what about the treasure you protect?” Mallow pressed. “The weapon?”

“So you’ve heard about that.” Her Death examined Mallow silently, a curious glint in her eyes that Mallow could not hope to interpret. “It is not my weapon. I merely keep it.”

“I am here to take it,” Mallow said, proud of the way her voice revealed only steel in her tone.”

“And so the truth comes out,” her Death mused. “What do you wish to conquer? A town? A kingdom?”

“No! I - “ Mallow flushed, and stuttered to a halt mid sentence. “I don’t want to conquer anything!”

“Oh? How, then, does a weapon help you discover yourself?”

“I need something that is _mine,_ ” Mallow said. “Not given, or bought, or created. I need it to be _me_.” She clenched her fists, and looked her Death straight in the eye. “I’m just remembering how to be alive. Now I need to _live._ ”

“Live,” her Death repeated, like it was a word she didn’t hear very often, and needed to turn it over in her mouth before it could be understood. “What is it like to live?” The shadows flicked and coalesced, and her Death looked at Mallow, suddenly no more than a small, dark girl.

Mallow sank slowly to her knees, and reached out to run a hand along the girl’s arm. She felt solid and warm, despite being made up of nothing more than shadows. “To live is to… to… it’s to laugh, and breathe, and cry with the people you love.”

“I have never done those things,” her Death whispered. “I am only Death. Tell me more.”

Mallow drew the girl down into her lap, and tried to remember that day Map had taught her about the mallow plant, and given her a new name. “To live is to feel the sun on your skin,” she began softly. “It’s the wind in your hair, and the dirt under your feet, and the people there to walk beside you. It’s when you trip and bloody your knee, and your mother kisses it better. It’s the joy of reading a new book, of learning a new skill, even when you fail and have to try again and again just to get it right. When you’re alive, you just exist, but when you live, you can _grow._ ”

Her Death was silent in her lap, and when Mallow looked down, the shadow-girl’s eyes were half-closed and thoughtful. “To live is the opposite of death,” the girl whispered. “I will never be able to live like you.”

Her eyes snapped open, and Mallow found herself staring into the depths of Death’s eyes. Her irises were flat and white, yet Mallow was drawn down, down, down through the layers until the world fell away around her, and the eyes were all she could see. Her breath came in short gasps, and she felt as though she were spinning rapidly, suspended in the limitless blankness of the eyes of her Death. She was blind to anything but the white around her, but she could feel her Death’s cool hand resting upon her head, and the voice which reached her ears. 

“I should like you to live, even if I cannot,” her Death whispered, and everything exploded.

When Mallow returned to her senses, she was breathing rapidly, her chest rising and falling as she gasped. White dots danced in her vision as her eyes readjusted to the dim forest light, and her hands grasped at empty air. Her lap was empty but her Death’s voice still danced in her ears. 

“Your mother’s sword…. Your mother’s sword…. Your mother’s sword….”

She took in another gasp of brisk autumn air, and felt her hand collide with cool metal. Still blinking rapidly in an attempt to clear her vision, she looked down, and saw a long, slender sewing needle draped across her lap.

The length of her arm from wrist to shoulder, its tip gleamed needle sharp in the waning light of the sun. The eye at the end was large enough to put her fist through. Overall, it gave the impression of a slender, yet deadly weapon. 

Mallow turned it slowly over in her hands, struggling to comprehend what had just happened. Biting her lip, she choked down the memories the needle evoked - _her mother’s hands on her own, teaching her how to sew up a seam; her own hands, larger, alone now, sewing seam after seam as tears dappled the cloth._

Slowly, Mallow pulled herself to her feet, and slipped the needle through her belt like a proper sword. She had her weapon now, and it was truly _hers,_ hers like nothing else had ever been.

“Thank you,” she whispered into the shadows of the trees, her eyes dry of all the tears she should have shed. “I will.”

Needle on her hip, Mallow walked away into the woods of Fairyland. She did not look back.

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave a comment to encourage me to write more in this world!


End file.
